I am the mother of four and grandmother of six and I am saddened by this news.  Just when I thought that we were finally winning the war on drugs, I find out that prescription drugs are being abused as well.  Whatever happened to the days where people would deal with pain by simply screaming or biting down on a piece of wood?  Nancy Reagan is probably turning in her grave at the thought of more and more people deciding to just say, “Yes.”

All of that being said, the Rudding family has also experienced the trials and horrors of drug abuse.  My husband Paul’s uncle bought some “anti-aging” pills from a traveling salesman one summer, which later we found out were women’s hormonal supplements.  Tragically, when he found out what the pills really were, he was too addicted to give them up.  He became more and more recluse, only leaving his house at night to hang around dirty bars and dark alleys.  He grew his hair out long and began wearing strange-looking clothing.  Things changed for him one day when he met the love of his life and decided to change his ways and clean himself up.  Last we heard he became a model for Sears, Roebuck and Company and never had any children.  We were able to see a few of his pictures and Paul said he looked like Diane Keaton with a five ‘o clock shadow.

I wish that Paul’s uncle were the only person in the Rudding family who had issues with drugs.  Sadly, our oldest son also was unable to eliminate drugs from his adolescence.  I started noticing a difference in his attitude and energy level right off the bat, but I quickly dismissed it as being his incessant need to consume large amounts of Hostess products for breakfast. 

The day I realized that our son had a problem is one of the happiest and saddest days I’ve ever had as a mother.  Apparently, on the way home from school one day our son witnessed a dog get hit and pinned under the wheel of a car.  Our oldest son has always been particularly sensitive when it comes to the well being of animals and watching this dog get struck by a car really cut into the core of his soul.  Once the driver screeched to a halt, our son noticed the dog’s leg pinned under the wheel.  Without a thought to his or anyone else’s safety, he ran out into the street and grabbed the undercarriage on the passenger side of the car.  With all of his might, he slowly lifted one side of the car off of the ground.  Our son later told me that as he was lifting, he looked into the dog’s eyes and saw the pain and fear and could feel himself getting stronger.   Somehow, he was able to lift the car up onto its side.  The driver was a fairly obese lady, so the force of her own body against the door consequently broke her arm in two places.  Some bystanders called the police and they eventually arrived to assist the woman and to fill out an accident report. 

After the policeman escorted my son home and explained what happened, I couldn’t believe that a ten-year-old boy could be strong enough to lift a car.  The story eventually got to the newspapers and we had reporters at our door for almost a week straight!  The front page headline read, “SUPERBOY SAVES DOG, HURTS WOMAN IN PROCESS.”  We were so proud of our son, and Paul even said that we could make a lot of money if we could somehow get our son to perform in some sort of a strength show.

One of the reporters suggested we take our son to a doctor that specializes in human abnormalities, just in case they could find out what it was that enabled him to have this type of strength.  Paul thought that it was a good idea, because he said that if it was his blood, then we could sell it to the Red Cross for a “boat-load of cash.” 

However, it was in the doctor’s office that our son confessed to spending his allowance on the “Flintstones Vitamins for Kids” and that he had been taking up to five or six a day for the past six months.  He also said that he only really liked the purple ones and that he would sell the rest of the other colors to the kids at school.  Scientists later determined that it was a combination of the purple Flintstones vitamins and Hostess products that produced our son’s super human strength. 

Needless to say, we weaned our son off of the vitamins and Hostess cakes and he now lives a very normal and clean life in Memphis Tennessee.  He does say that every once in a while he has a craving for the vitamins and cakes, but always says that that sort of strength should be left for super heroes.  

Ironically, the dog that was hit by the car was a stray and managed to follow our son and the policeman to our house.  Our son named him “Fred,” but Paul and I would only allow him to keep it if he promised to get clean.  A few weeks later, as Paul was getting a midnight snack, he accidentally stepped on Fred’s injured leg and Fred bit Paul in the ankle.  The next day Paul claimed that he might have rabies because he felt like he was going to foam at the mouth and so I took him to the doctor. 

Paul demanded that the doctor take a sample of what Paul claimed was his foam so that the scientists could analyze it.  Paul did receive rabies shots just as a precaution, but the truth came out once the results came back from the lab.  The doctor told me that Paul’s foam was merely a combination of Sprite and Tums and that it appeared that Paul could be addicted.  Paul denied having a dependency on Tums and I believed him…until I got home and checked in the medicine cabinet where I found three opened bottles of Tums…each bottle without ANY red ones!